“Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantamania” nabbed $32.2M in its second domestic weekend, a 69% drop. That’s a historic low second weekend for Marvel. No MCU movie has ever had a worst drop during its second weekend of release.
‘Quantamania’ isn’t well-liked. It has a 50 Metascore and is 51% rotten on RT. It’s the worst-reviewed movie in MCU history. Even Chloe Zhao’s misbegotten “Eternals” had a better MC score than ‘Quantamania.’ Even worse, audiences have soured on it — a B CinemaScore is also an all-time low for an MCU movie.
PHASE 4’s slate of movies have been far and away the weakest, completed with the release of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” last November. The MCU is currently in the worst shape that it’s been in since its inception more than 15 years ago.
What else do you make of “Thor: Love and Thunder,” “Black Widow,” “Eternals,” and “Doctor Strange into the Multiverse.” They just aren’t good movies. Only “Spider-Man: No Way Home” managed to defy expectations.
PHASE 5 has now kicked off with the terrible ‘Quantamania.’ Coming up next are “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” “The Marvels,” “Captain America: New World Order,” “Thunderbolts,” and “Blade.” Shoot me now.
There’s been a lot of talk about why this fourth phase of the MCU has been such a commercial — and critical — disappointment. Marvel made several miscalculations post-Endgame that have impacted the quality of their films.
People had emotional attachment and investment to the old characters, but Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, T'Challa, and Thor are all gone now. Marvel then thought that releasing a whole bunch of films and TV shows would remedy this, but it made the situation worse. The market saturation is now showing.
What we’re likely seeing is, finally, a loss of general interest and the decline of the MCU. Perhaps we're collectively past the superhero domination of the pop culture/entertainment zeitgeist. There are hints of this occurring.
Marvel head, Kevin Feige, plans all of these movies at least half a decade in advance, so they've put all of their bets on this latest multiverse and the boring-as-hell Kang as the major villain. The long term planning was key to their previous success but now that the set-up has been seen, and has not been appealing to fans, what’s next?
Marvel has taken its fans for granted and, in the process, have burned themselves dry.